need and advanced the money.  Such a man felt grateful, and, because of his good qualities, joined with the purely sordid and corrupt heelers and crooked politicians to become part of the Platt machine.  In his turn Mr. Platt was recognized by the business men, the big contributors, as an honorable man; not only a man of his word, but a man who, whenever he received a favor, could be trusted to do his best to repay it on any occasion that arose.  I believe that usually the contributors, and the recipient, sincerely felt that the transaction was proper and subserved the cause of good politics and good business; and, indeed, as regards the major part of the contributions, it is probable that this was the fact, and that the only criticism that could properly be made about the contributions was that they were not made with publicity—­and at that time neither the parties nor the public had any realization that publicity was necessary, or any adequate understanding of the dangers of the “invisible empire” which throve by what was done in secrecy.  Many, probably most, of the contributors of this type never wished anything personal in exchange for their contributions, and made them with sincere patriotism, desiring in return only that the Government should be conducted on a proper basis.  Unfortunately, it was, in practice, exceedingly difficult to distinguish these men from the others who contributed big sums to the various party bosses with the expectation of gaining concrete and personal advantages (in which the bosses shared) at the expense of the general public.  It was very hard to draw the line between these two types of contributions.

There was but one kind of money contributions as to which it seemed to me absolutely impossible for either the contributor or the recipient to disguise to themselves the evil meaning of the contribution.  This was where a big corporation contributed to both political parties.  I knew of one such case where in a State campaign a big corporation which had many dealings with public officials frankly contributed in the neighborhood of a hundred thousand dollars to one campaign fund and fifty thousand dollars to the campaign fund of the other side—­and, I believe, made some further substantial contributions in the same ratio of two dollars to one side for every one dollar given to the other.  The contributors were Democrats, and the big contributions went to the Democratic managers.  The Republican was elected, and after his election, when a matter came up affecting the company, in which its interests were hostile to those of the general public, the successful candidate, then holding a high State office, was approached by his campaign managers and the situation put frankly before him.  He was less disturbed than astonished, and remarked, “Why, I thought So-and-so and his associates were Democrats and subscribed to the Democratic campaign fund.”  “So they did,” was the answer; “they subscribed to them twice as much as they subscribed